Lawmaker Lambasts West's Unchanged Policy on Iran

Service : Politic

TEHRAN, May 31 (ICANA) – A member of the Iranian parliament rapped the US and its allies for their dual-track policy on Iran, underlining that the policy of offering talks and imposing threats and sanctions will never work in the case of Iran.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011 8:00:50 PM

Member of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Mahmoud Ahmadi Bighash denounced the US-led West for their wrong and failed treatment of Iran's nuclear case, stressing that the western powers need to give up their middle-ages-type approach of resorting to threats and sanctions to intimidate others to accept their views and then expect to engage in talks.

He added that Iran has proved its goodwill to the world on numerous occasions, and reiterated that the Islamic Republic has no covert nuclear activities.

Ahmadi Bighash also emphasized that Iran is ready to hold talks with P5+1 and the US on equal footing that would be considerate of the Islamic Republic's interests.

Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.

Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path.

Iran insists that it should continue enriching uranium because it needs to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it is building in the southwestern town of Darkhoveyn as well as its first nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr.

Iran currently suffers from an electricity shortage that has forced the country into adopting a rationing program by scheduling power outages - of up to two hours a day - across both urban and rural areas.

Iran plans to construct additional nuclear power plants to provide for the electricity needs of its growing population.

The Islamic Republic says that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of IAEA's questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.

Political observers believe that the United States has remained at loggerheads with Iran mainly over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran's nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for the other third-world countries.